#AmiBack2.0 vs WB3.1
42 messages in this thread
Hi all,
I found that after installing WB 3.1, my AmiBack 2.0h stopped working
(consistent lock-ups during backup to tape drive).
Does anyone know if Ami-Back 2.0h is definately not compatible w/ WB 3.1 or
perhaps it is something else in my system?
Does Ami-Back 3.0 solve the problem?
Are there other backup programs compatible with WB 3.1?
Thanks to anyone in advance.
You are correct, not only Amiback but QuarterBack (now orphaned) is not
compatible with 3.1. There is a new program called DIAVOLO in the library
here that is supposed to be compat.
Tom
alternate: jonest@hfsi.com
I never met a man I didn't like…Will Rogers
Tom,
DIAVOLO works nicely with 3.1. And is fast and reliable <g>.
Regards,
Joachim Sondermann-Bieker
on Amiga AutoPilot 1.77 from Cologne, Germany
Joachim,
I have not had luck with Diavolo and 3.1. Are you using tape to backup to? By
any chance did you have incompatibilities with Amiback or QBack?
Diavolo works great for me on both a 3.1 A4000 and a 3.1 A3000 using an Archive
Viper as the medium.
-sja
Thanks Steve,
Did you find any problems with QBack or AmiBack.
John,
I don't have QBack or AmiBack, so, no, I didn't find any problems <grin>
The only problem I found, using the Archive Viper, is that it will not read the
tape if you've got it hooked up to scsi host adapter that uses the Western
Digital Beta scsi chip — which is the stock part in the 3000 and on the 2091.
You have to upgrade it to the non-beta part (version 08, I believe). I don't
know if that problem is more widespread than just the Archive Viper, but, I had
to upgrade the chip in my 3000.
John,
which version of Diabolo did you try? I've got 1.27. It works well, but I don't
have a tape streamer. It is said that there were some problems with tape in
earlier versions, though.
No experience with Amiback nor QBack, sorry.
Joachim Sondermann-Bieker
on Amiga AutoPilot 1.77 from Cologne, Germany
Joachim,
That's interesting. I'm using version 1.26. I have a hunch its not the
Workbench version stopping Diavolo from working because the lock-ups are
instantaneous. The other programs lockup randomly after a few minutes.
John,
I just had a look into the troubleshooting section of my manual. There could be
problems with reselection or with the termination of your SCSI.
Maybe this gives you a clue…
BTW, you can reach Martin Korndoerfer, who made Diavolo, on CIS: 73064,3307.
He's very helpful, as far as I can tell.
Regards,
Joachim Sondermann-Bieker
on Amiga AutoPilot 1.77 from Cologne, Germany
> DIAVOLO works nicely with 3.1. And is fast and reliable <g>.
Thanks for the information Joachim. I have the demo and have tried it on
my 2000 using 2.1 OS and it works well there too. Well, as well as a demo
can work.
> from Cologne, Germany
I envy you. I don't suppose there will be a Koln '95 amigafest? I went
every year while I was there.
Tom
alternate: jonest@hfsi.com
I never met a man I didn't like…Will Rogers
Tom,
you have been in Cologne. Great <g>. I really like this town more and more.
As to the amigafest: I have been there at the very opening of the fair (has no
longer been Amiga only, BTW) in November 1994. They announced a next one for
November of 1995, but I'm in doubt, too.
But maybe, maybe…
Cheers,
Joachim Sondermann-Bieker
on Amiga AutoPilot 1.77 from Cologne, Germany
Amiback and Quarterback are not compatible with WB 3.1 ? I have not had a
single problem with backup/restore on two Amigas both equipped with 3.1
using these programs – whats the nature of the problem you are seeing ?
Also Amiback tools and Quarterback tools are both fully functional as far
as I can tell.
Gary Cooper ( the live one )
From Albuquerque, New Mexico
Seems to me that WB3.1 supports (a)synchronous SCSI, and you might have a
conflict between 3.1 and AmiBack settings.
-ash
Kyfho
I remember you Gary, how's tricks? If you have no problem with 3.1 and
QB/AB I am glad, but a fellow sysop here tried to upgrade his 3000 to 3.1
and had horror stories to tell about this. He has a Wangtek 150mb drive,
almost the industry standard. The nature of the problem, if I remember
right, was appearing to successfully save a 520mb HD but when he went back
to restore it it always failed to restore. The fido amiga echos were
running rivers of blood over this back before christmas.
Tom
alternate: jonest@hfsi.com
I never met a man I didn't like…Will Rogers
Thanks Tom for you reply,
I have now found out that AmiBack 2.0g or h, QuarterBack *and* Diavolo (the
demo) don't work with the Tanberg tape drive on my A2000 with WB3.1.
I was using AmiBack or QBack with tape drive on my WB2.04 or WB2.1 system for 2
years without any real problems.
This is a major drag. I had no idea of this conflict. Considering the
seemingly small improvement that WB3.1 is giving me (over WB2.1), I am
considering swapping back my ROM.
Oh well.
John
Fascinating information. I use QB 5.0 as my old standby out of habit on a
2000 with 2.1 dos. I tried 3.1 and decided to go back to the 2.1 rom on my
BBS machine. My wife liked the pretty wallpaper and using 1.3 games on the
backup 2000 so we keep booting it up there.
I had not heard any slanders before aimed specifically at Tanberg, my
friend that had this problem bad on a A3000 had a wangtek 150mb. He went
back to 2.1 OS also after losing 2 500mb hds and no way to restore them.
Tom
alternate: jonest@hfsi.com
I never met a man I didn't like…Will Rogers
I am using AmiBack 2.0g under OS 3.1 on my A2000 and TEAC 150T mechanism
without any problems. What problems are you having?
-Jonathan
MAC Quadra/486PC compatible courtesy Amiga, Emplant and BB. Emplant beta
tester. Running AP v1.77. E-mail: JonathanB@delrina.com
Jonathan,
The problems I am having are random lock-ups and gurus while backing up to a
Tanberg tape drive on an A2000 with WB 3.1. I had no problem doing this for
some time using AmiBack or QBack on WB 2.04 and WB 2.1.
I have tried using GVP Series II controller (disconnect disabled) and I tried
using an A2091 controller. Same results all around.
It also happens using the new program Diavolo.
Glad it works for you 🙂 .
John,
I'm running AmiBack 2.0h on my 3.1 A2000 with no problems.
Well, there are a few, but they have nothing to do with the OS or the machine.
I've got a few problems with the way they wrote the code, but it works
acceptably well for me.
After looking back at your message, I'm backing up to Syquest 270M carts not
tape. That could be an entirely different can of worms.
Robb
Robert,
I think backing up to a tape drive is a different animal.
It took me a lot of work to get it running at first, but its been doing fine
for two years under WB 2.04 or 2.1.
Major disappointment.
John,
Probably. I think others are using Amiback to tape under 3.1 though.
Good luck! Robb
John,
although many people have reportedly have problems with QB and AB, both of them
work on my 3.1 A2000s (I have two of them). It may be limited to tha AGA
machines, I'm not sure. I did have one set of crashes just after installing
3.1 but after I ran QB from floppy for a while everything returned to normal.
Now I run from HD with no trouble.
May want to check the disconnect status of the tape drive, or try limiting the
backup to go through chip ram.
wmc – via Autopilot!
Hi Wayne,
Well I don't understand it. My A2000 PPS '040 with 3.1 sure don't work with my
tape drive after trying two different controllers with three different backup
programs. And it sure did work before 3.1 (using WB2.1).
Darn!
I'm still scratching my head and trying different things. I have the tape
disconnect disabled when using the GVP controller. I have tried using
different RAM areas also.
I also just noticed ProDraw 3.0 stopped working. Yikes, what next. Time to
look for a ROM switcher.
Thanks.
John,
I have an A2000 with PP&S 28Mhz 040 and a GVP scsi controller running Ami-Back
2.0g with no problems. My tape drive is a TEAC 150T streaming tape. I am sure
that Ami-Back is not 3.1 incompatible.
-Jonathan
MAC Quadra/486PC compatible courtesy Amiga, Emplant and BB. Emplant beta
tester. Running AP v1.77. E-mail: JonathanB@delrina.com
PMFJI –
With all the problems, what is the advantage of upgrading to 3.1? Even if
it works, which it doesn't alot of the time, the advantages are minimal.
And I understand it was never sanctioned by Commodore, so it's an
unauthorized release as well. I believe the purchaser of Commodore will
have something to say to the company that profited from its sales.
Hank
Videology, Inc. Where you get P.O.M.P. under
all circumstances
Hank,
I don't agree, I beg your pardon. I've changed from 2.1 to 3.1 on my A2000/030
with no problems at all. Everything works nicely, only faster, as far as I can
tell. Programs that run under 2.1 should almost always do under 3.1. Some progs
have new features with 3.x+ only.
Only if you already own 3.0 you will not see that much of a difference. But 3.1
is said to be more stable.
>> so it's an unauthorized release as well.
I don't think so. VillageTronic Germany released it, mainly to get their
Picasso board into fully working shape (256 color WB and so on). But AFAIK it
_has_ been approved by C=, well, at least sort of <g>. Only thing I heard is
that this state of developement would not have been released by C= yet if there
had been "normal" circumstances then.
Regards,
Joachim Sondermann-Bieker
on Amiga AutoPilot 1.77 from Cologne, Germany
Joachim –
Certainly, speed improvements can be a major plus, but I've seen more
compatibility problems. We tried a Toaster 4000 installed in a GVP
68040/33 accelerated A2000. With 2.1 the system ran flawlessly. With 3.1
the Toaster consistently refused to boot.
If the speed improvement was significant, then the pricey upgrade would be
justified, but at the chance that my customer's systems won't work, we
chose to bypass it.
On the issue of authorization, I believe you've hit the nail on the head.
VillageTronic had a board, useless without the 3.1 software support. In
order to sell their board, they had to provide 3.1 also. And since
Commodore wasn't around to okay or deny it, they packaged it and put it on
the market. Certainly, anyone who purchases the Commodore assests, will
consider that product theirs, and therefore the proceeds.
Hank
Videology, Inc. Where you get P.O.M.P. under
all circumstances
Hank,
it's a pity the Toaster will not boot with 3.1.
As a matter of fact, at least C= Germany _has_ still been around at the time
when VillageTronic released 3.1. I remember lenghty discussions of it's pros
and cons on German Z-Net with Dr. Peter Kittel by C= Germany, who was still in
his job then. Heck, they even sold new A4000s these days.
OTOH, you're surely right that any purchaser of the Commodore remains will make
their claims.
Regards,
Joachim Sondermann-Bieker
on Amiga AutoPilot 1.77 from Cologne, Germany
Joachim –
I don't want to start any rumors – I was not able to boot the Toaster on a
GVP 68040/33 accelerated A2000. I believe others have succeeded with
different configurations.
Let's all hope there is a problem soon, so someone will own Commodore.
Hank
Videology, Inc. Where you get P.O.M.P. under
all circumstances
>> Let's all hope there is a problem soon … <<
Huh?
–Jim
Didn't mean to be so cryptic – If there is a problem with the sale of 3.1
without Commodore's okay, then there must be a company that owns the
rights to 3.1 (i.e. they just bought Commodore). Therefore, the purchase
of Commodore has finally gone through.
Hank
Videology, Inc. Where you get P.O.M.P. under
all circumstances
John,
If you want o EMail your start-up sequence and user-startup (old and new) I'll
take a look at them. I know with GVP stuff, since they developed it to 2.0 and
have made no updates since then there are some futzing around that has to be
done in the startup-sequence to get things to work.
Does PPS HW have special commands to deal with ROM remapping and cache
handling? If so, you may want to put those statements before the SetPatch as I
understand the new setpatch sorta snags then 040 MMU and makes it difficult for
other stuff that may have used it in the past (like fastrom mapping).
Do you have arp.library? If so do you use Arp040_fix in your start-up?
Did you reformat your HD's and then restore your stuff or just write a new RDB?
I beleive the FFS changed from 2.0 to 3.1. Maybe you only got part of the
change in place? Have you gone back in an reseated the cards, cables and
checked the internal disk's term settings?
Can't think of much else to try…
wmc – via Autopilot!
Wayne,
What about upgrading AmiBack 2.0g or 2.0h to the latest version (ie 2.0i). Has
anyone mentioned that?
Trent
'Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori'
I did that (wasn't easy since they only supply patches for the standalone
version, not the ABTools + version disks – had to mod the patch script).
TO be honest, I have made test back-ups with it, but didn't do any restores.
The Diavolo Demo doesn't allow restores, so I don't know about that one.
Basically, I'm still limping along on QB 6.01 and it seems to be working fine.
My fall-back is HDBakup, I guess.
The thing about every backup program other than quarterback that really gets
me is that the authors don't want to put each backup's index on the tape as the
first file of each backup so that you don't have to kerp tack of a gazilion
indexs on floppies, or loose megabytes in tape index files on the HD (some of
which are not human readable) or having to go through index reconstruction runs
that can be longer than restoring the files you are looking for in the first
place.
wmc – via Autopilot!
I agree. It is one of the drawbacks to Amiback (or QB for that matter). That
is one of the reasons that I liked Diavolo. It put it's index files where they
were supposed to be, at the beginning of the backup.
Trent
'Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori'
Trent,
Your comment about Diavolo intrigues me. I have the demo I downloaded when it
was first put here for SWREG. However, on that demo (that only allows backups
and no restores) it creates a directory in s where it stores some pretty hefty
sized index directories and files that were hex, not human readable. Has that
changed? Or did I just mess up the set-up?
wmc – via Autopilot!
Hmmm.. Nothing like that in my setup, Wayne. Then again I use a Viper tape
drive, and Diavolo just saves the index to the tape. Do you use a tape system
(or some other removeable system)?
Trent
'Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori'
Trent, I have a Maynstream 2 gig dat drive (4mm). On Diavolo's SCSI Settings,
SCSI support menu, SCSI Options panel, the Catalog Options for Disk, Partition
and None are all ghosted, and there is a directory name (default is 'Tape
Catalogs) in the Path requester.
wmc – via Autopilot!
I am looking into 2 gig DAT SCSI II tape units. Is there a special driver you
needed or is it just "plug and play" with Diavolo or AmiBack/QB etc? What is
the price of the tape unit if you don't mind me asking, and how much do the
tapes cost?
Jim R. Ollick on a Warped 4000/040/40
Using AP 1.77 from Bergenfield, NJ
Hmmm.. I assume that you dat drive is SCSI right? (not that it matters) On
mine (the v1.26 DEMO) the program just did an inquiry and the specs for the
tape drive came up. I do know that when I made a test backup, Diavolo gave the
option to place the index file at the beginning of the backup. One day I will
actually get around to registering it (unless AmiBack 3.0 is better).
Trent
'Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori'
Thanks Wayne, those are excellent suggestions.Some I have tried, some I will
try some day.
For now, I'm tired of fooling with this.
I dug out a ROM switcher I had lying around and put KS 2.04 on one and 3.1 one
the other. The tape drive _does_ work again under 2.1. Who knows what the
problem is. Obviously some people are getting it to work. It probably has
something to do with the PPS '040 and the associated software.
But hey, to all those who have helped me, thanks for taking the time to answer.
I'm putting this to bed. I'll switch to 2.1 to do backups.
Someday I'll tackle this again, and I'll ask you to take a look at my s-s and
user-s. Your very generous with your assistance.
Bye now